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Generally, the way PSD gets started in a new area is someone decides to run it. We original designers of the system are happy to offer support, be we cannot do the ground work of finding a venue, talking to the daters, and so forth. Several different sorts of folks have run their own events, and it is totally doable and often even fun!

How it works is we host the registration site and you run your event by using our tools, which we call DateWrangler(tm), over the internet. The only thing you need on your end is a browser and some hardware including a printer. We do charge $50 for an initial set up and your first event and $30 to pay for 6 months of cloud servers that we pass on to folks who host the application. This is all due before we set up your registration site. Subsequent events are $30 each, plus $5/month to maintain your server. In most circumstances, the door fees you charge could cover this and all the other fees you may incur. We typically do a bit better than breaking even with the events we run, but we try to keep our ticket prices rock bottom.

We ask folks agree to a service contract that basically focuses on equity. A (probably out of date, but you get the gist) version of such an agreement is this sample DateWrangler Use Agreement. Also, here is a system manual. This document talks about what an event involves, and gives some details on the system. (It is also out of date.)

If interested, contact us after you have read the above agreement. Put something clever in your email proving you have read this agreement.

A Quick Overview

On the night of the event, you’ll come to our venue and check in; we use the check-in list to make sure nobody is scheduled on a speed date with someone who couldn’t make it. After everyone (about 100-200 poly people!) has checked in and we’ve gotten up on the microphone to welcome you, we will print out a unique dating schedule for each person, telling them where to go and when. (See an example of what a dating sheet looks like below.)

At this point, the dating can start. In each of a series of rounds your sheet will tell you to go to a specifically numbered table. Your date for that round will also be told to go there. You meet at that table and talk. At the end of a few minutes you say goodbye, part ways, secretly write down whether you would be interested in seeing your date again, and go on to your next table. Some of your dating rounds will be blank – this allows you to get a moment to collect your wits, go purchase a drink, and chat with people also having a break.

At the end of the evening you turn in your sheet and we enter the data into our matching system. If someone you are interested in was also interested in you, it’s a match! We will send you an email listing all of such matches, along with the relevant email addresses.

What will happen at Poly Speed Dating (In much more detail)

Step 0: Register.

This is the part where you fill out the registration form online and answer a bunch of questions as to what you want. Based on that information we are going to be able to make matches and schedule an evening of dates with people that have the potential of being mutually interested based on a few characteristics such as sexual preference and desired relationship style.

Also based on this information, we can determine if you are likely to have many or few dates. If you are at risk of having very few dates, we will email you before the event so you can adjust your registration to be more open, or decide whether to come to the event or not.

Step 1: Check In.

When you show up, there will be a line to check in and get your nametag. You can speed this up by having your Poly Speed Dating ID ready (the thing that looks like FZL1102), but we can look it up if you don’t have it.

Step 2: Mingle.

While people are still arriving the social space will be open for chatting, mingling, ordering drinks, quietly reading books while everything around you is chaos, etc. And we do mean chaos: we typically have between 100 and 200 people at these events. You are welcome to talk to people you do not know, if they seem amenable, but this is not a time to be picking people up. It is definitely not okay to ask people for contact information or anything of that nature.

Step 3: Introduction. We’ll stand up and talk, hopefully not for too long. We’ll repeat the things in this email and remind people how to be respectful and awesome toward each other. Then we will hand out The Date Sheets, which look like this:

Sample Date Sheet

And how do you use them? Well, keep reading…

Step 4: Dating.

Your date sheet has 10-15 lines on it, one for each round of dating. During your dating rounds, you’ll go to one of about 100 numbered spots in the room (mostly tables) and meet one or more people to have a speed date with them. Your Date Sheet includes your dates’ nametag codes, so you can tell if you’re talking to the right person.

You’ll have about 6 minutes for each speed date. During that time, we encourage you to tell one another about who you are and ask questions to get to know each other better. The date will end with an announcement from us (something like “Round 6 is ending! Round 6 is ending! Move on to Round 7.”)

Step 4a: Deciding.

After each date, once you and your date are no longer in the same spot, you should take a second to mark either “Yes” or “No” for your date on your Date Sheet. You might also, if you wrote down “Yes”, jot down a note somewhere on why you liked your date so you can remember them the next day. After the event, if you and your date both said “Yes”, we will send you one another’s email addresses. If either of you said “No”, we won’t.

Step 4b: Moving To The Next Date.

Your next round of dating may be at the same table or a different one. If it’s a different one, you’ll have a short time to find the table and meet your next date; if it’s the same table, you get to stay put. We try to keep as many people as possible in the same place, so you may stay put fairly often. Your next round may also be blank, meaning you have a break; everybody will have some rounds without dates so that you can use the restrooms, get food, chill out, or whatever else you want. There will be a designated social area with no speed dates in it; anytime you don’t have a date, you’re welcome to hang out there.

Step 5: Exit.

When all the dating rounds are over, you have to give us your Date Sheet. That’s how we know who you said “Yes” to. We’ll also have an anonymous feedback survey that we hand out near the end of the event; it’s not mandatory, but it is appreciated. Once you turn your date sheet in, you are free to go!

Then sometime soon, hopefully within the next day, you’ll get an email from us listing any matches you had. (You’ll get the email even if you don’t have matches.) It may also list “cruises” (we’ll describe those in a second). The rest is up to you!

Other questions

Q: What do I do if I have a match?
A: If you want to, we encourage you to email the person and say “Hi! We matched at Poly Speed Dating. Want to get coffee sometime?” It doesn’t have to be coffee, it could be anything, but we do encourage you to keep it low-key at first. You can get to know a lot about someone in 6 minutes… but not that much. Following up with more casual friendly conversation is almost always a better idea than diving into dating with both feet. That said, anything the two of you both enthusiastically agree to is okay. Communicate!

Q: How should I behave on speed dates?
A: This is important and you’ll hear more about it: Do not escalate the date. Here’s what that means. While you’re on a speed date at our event, you should not ask for contact information or try to arrange a future date. You should not say “Are you going to say yes to me? I’m totally saying yes to you.” You should not say “That movie sounds fun, want to go see it?” You should not try to connect on Facebook. There are a lot of things that are appropriate in other social situations that we ask you to avoid entirely here; the goal is to meet people without either of you feeling any pressure to send or respond to signals of interest. If there’s mutual interest, you’ll find out when the email goes out.

This rule applies at the event even when you aren’t on a speed date. Which brings us to…

Q: What if I meet someone in the social area I want to keep talking to?
A: Sometimes people meet at the PSD bar or social area and strike up a conversation. But we ask people not to exchange contact information. So then what? Well, we have a mechanism for that! Your Date Sheet has space at the bottom for “cruising” people. To do that, you put their PSD ID (the letters and numbers on their nametag) in one of the blanks. We will then send that person your email address (but we do not give you their email address). Cruising someone does not give you any information from or about that person unless they decide to write back.

As you might guess from the name, you can also cruise someone you didn’t even meet, but just thought looked cool. But since they don’t get any information about you except your name, the odds of them writing back may not be super high. But hey, you probably helped make someone’s day!

Q: I thought I really clicked with someone but I guess they didn’t say yes. Should I find them on social media and ask why?
A: Please don’t. If you weren’t a mutual match, it’s probably best to let that person be.

Q: There are people I definitely don’t want to match with during the event. What can I do?
A: We can prevent any specific unwanted matches. If you know someone’s PSD ID, that’s easy; email us and we will prevent you from matching them. We can also prevent matches at the event. If you see someone during the Mingling phase who you specifically do not want to match, let us know their nametag ID or their name or whatever you can, and we will make sure the match doesn’t happen.

The following are some ideas from Pepper, one of the co-founders of PSD, in response to folks asking how to do it on their own (and without our system):

You can run a speed-dating-like event using a “table for four” structure, where people meet more than one person at a time. This tends to handle mixed sexualities better because you just meet more people. The format goes like this:

1) At the beginning of the event, give everyone a nametag with a unique name on it.

2) Also at the beginning, have each person pick colored paper with numbers on it out of a number of buckets – one bucket for each color.

3) The event consists of a series of rounds, where you call out “go to the table with the number on the red piece of paper” and then people go there.

4) Due to the way you set up the numbers in the buckets, each table has 4 people.

5) In the round, people introduce themselves and talk, maybe for 10 minutes or a little longer.

6) After the time, end the round and have people get up and mingle. If they liked someone, they write their nametag name down on a sheet of paper. They can also just write down folks they meet while mingling.

7) Start a new round after a little mingling.

8) At the end, collect the sheets of paper. Order them alphabetically and manually cross-check them. If two people wrote down each others’ name, send them email with each others’ email or (if at a campout) introduce them.

If you have too many rounds for colors, you can put a round number on the paper instead of having a color. Though really, you should probably stick to no more than 8 rounds with lots of mingling – the mingling is where the magic actually happens. You’ll need to meter the number of tables that go into the buckets by the number of people who show up, though if a few tables end up with 3 people that’s okay.

This can be run pretty easily with some prep, including at a campout or burning-man-style event. Save enough time for the cross-check at the end and get a number of people working on it – it can be a lot of work. Maybe do a practice cross-check run to see how it goes.

Pay attention to event atmosphere as well. You want to make it feel like a romantic dating event, not like a church prayer meeting with bright lights and uncomfortable chairs. Consider whether to have alcohol or not – it can go either way. Make it easy to socialize before, during, and after the event. The real trick of these events is getting a bunch of people in a room together, all of whom are looking for new partners.

There’s no actual minimum size, but if you have fewer than 20 people it could get a little weird, I would expect.

Speed Dating in general is a social event where people meet a number of potential dating partners. Say you were a dater. During the evening you will rotate though several “dates” of about 5 minutes each. After each date you check off whether or not you are interested in romantically pursuing that person any further. Your choices are collected at the end of the night and if you and your date both were interested, your information will be exchanged via email within the next few days.

Poly Speed Dating is this, but done in a flexible way in order to accommodate people of vastly different interests. For example, using our system we ensure that people are matched with dates who are open to their expressed gender. We balance out dates so bisexuals get a mix of genders on their dates. And so forth.

This is done by having people pre-register, filling out a form asking them basic questions about what they are looking for. Then, at the event, we check off who is there and dynamically schedule the dates in real-time. Then we are off to the races!